Crowns are a dental procedure that is familiar to many people. Placing a crown on a broken-down tooth has been the treatment of choice for a long time. What you may not realize, however, is how much crowns have changed over the last few years.
Crowns used to be either metal (often gold), or porcelain over metal with a dark line at the edge. A crown covered the whole tooth so there would be adequate retention. Now, we still use our gold and porcelain, but crowns can also be made of strong, tooth-colored materials as well. The cements we use are much better, too. If there is healthy enamel remaining, it can be preserved with the new techniques available.
Porcelain, when bonded to a tooth, has nearly the same properties of strength and translucency (the ability of light to pass through) as natural enamel. Thanks to the amazing artistry of our ceramist, sometimes the only way to tell the difference between a crown and a natural tooth is that the crown looks better!
A bridge is one of the options available when there is a tooth missing and strong teeth remaining on either side of the space. The teeth adjacent to the space are prepared the same way as for a crown. In the laboratory, a false tooth, or “pontic”, will be attached between the two crowns. The crowns are all cemented in one piece. If the missing tooth is in an area that shows, we can make the pontic look like a natural tooth at the gumline.
